Would you buy a bowl of noodles for 125 yuan (US$18.20) in the airport, compared to the normal price of 20 yuan (US$2.90) elsewhere? But it's not uncommon for ordinary goods like water bottles or tissues to be outrageously expensive if they're sold in airports, bus stations, motorway stops or other places where travelers have no choice.
Liu Xu, a researcher at the Intellectual Property and Competition Law Research Center at Tongji University, says that one reason for such unreasonable pricing is that laws or regulations, such as China’s Anti-monopoly Law, haven’t been strictly implemented, and there are few punishments for violators.
The other reason, Liu says, is that rents in such locations are sky-high, and the owners thus encourage shops to gouge customers. To tackle these problems, a new code of conduct on pricing items and services in public transportation areas was published in draft form for public comments on the website of Jiangsu Administration of Commodity Prices on March 21.
Liu praised this regulation, since it makes a clear effort to curb price manipulation and other frauds via improving management of these areas. For instance, one article of this regulation states that management of such areas should follow the principle of market competition, have an open channel for complaints, and have good internal price management. But he worried that implementation might not match theory, unless a detailed list of problems and punishments was supplied and implemented by local authorities.
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